The main arguments given here against solar PV are (i) vast areas and (ii )intermittency. The area argument is weak for latitudes +/- 40, a few square km to service major populations will readily be found if the result is cheap clean limitless power, and I have faith that markets will readily find a storage solution for overnight/cloudiness , be that pumping water uphill, chemical (batteries etc) or thermal, or even back-up gas-fired power. I understand that intra-day variability is also a problem , but if the power is cheap (and the flow is “free”), overbuilding and storage can surely be a way around it?

Regarding nuclear, let’s say the cost of nuclear electricity at the plant gate is 1.00 currency unit /kWh. Are there industry wide figures on how much of that is for the insurance premium ? (ie to cover all potential mishaps) And how much is put into the sinking fund to decommission the plant at end of it’s working life, and to store the waste it has produced in that time? And a related question. How much (in present day $ terms) is the likely cost of Fukushima clean-up compared to its life-time profit from power sold?

Example: When the books author speaks of the poor showing of solar over the past three decades…I’ll have to now get a copy and find out…does he mention the hinderance from Governmental changes of policies, the power brokers and monopolistic utility companies and their continued involvement and now expansion into the industry. Utility involvement in solar today..speaks volumes to me, a simple minded, conservation and solar marketer and finance man, it is at least real enough to them that they are forced to hedge their bets against the more conventional sources and power structures they’ve built over the years. Proof enough to me anyway. Does he assume the utilities involvement in the solar industry has been a positive one? it has not, yet even today, many across the country collect, budget and disperse solar rebate money, even more today than before. Wolfs guarding the hens and “helping the fledglings” Right.

Next does the book even go into the conservation aspect..any good ole pioneer in the field, would insist on a full audit of the home or business.
Yet many in the industry talk solar pv only when a combination, after conservation measures are explored, is much more cost-effective than solar alone.

Finally the real unknown factor…The hunger for change, in the heart and minds of the American people. Thirty years of working and watching this industry…before it was a green one even, I must say, I see some real promise. I am no slide rule fool, but I’ve paid a few over the years.

Just my thoughts._Green Earl

Solar thermal is indeed operating in California. That is not the issue. The issue is the scale-up potential and its competitiveness with other zero carbon energy sources as the scale of operations increases.

The key for a book like “The Solar Fraud” is to be found not in the myriad of the technical details pro-and-con the various alterantive energy sources, but in the quasi-religious belief in

(1) the continuing use of the atmosphere as an open sewer for carbon gases;
(2) open eneded population growth and consumerism, and
(3) disregard of nature.

Once such basic premises are made, the rest is a mixture of half-truths and pure nonsense.
__________________________________________________________
Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation “TREC”
A Powerful Partnership for Development, Climate Stabilisation.
Formed by initiative of the German Ass. Club of Rome, and of the Hamburg Climate Protection Foundation HKF aimed at Sustainability and renewable energies

And with a growth in peak demand comes a growth in baseload and high demand. They are entangled.

I agree that this variability does not mean it is not worthwhile for the Swedes to build those turbines. They should definitely be building them. But the scale-up challenge, which is at the heart of all this recent discussion on BNC, increases non-linearly as wind or other solar sources become a larger and larger part of the energy mix. So what is Sweden’s ultimate wind capacity? With its hydro, probably 20 to 30%. That’s great, but not enough. They need their nuclear power stations too, and almost certainly a lot more of them in the future. That’s my point.

The graph you provided of Swedish wind power generation is an example of how variable wind can be. But this variability does not mean it was not worthwhile for the Swedes to build those wind turbines. When the wind blows Sweden’s hydroelectric capacity reduces its output, which conserves energy for use when the wind is not blowing or demand is high, making the wind capacity quite useful.

If I caused offence I apologise. I am not trying to be derisory or anything like it. I am trying to point at that people who have spent years in the renewable industry and have tried to get their ideas across get drowned out by the baseload fallacy or intermittant fallacy when the answers are there if you care to accept them.

Again I really should not say anymore as I am obviously getting into Ender fatigue territory again. I will retire and work on my Trainer critique.

If energy demand isn’t growing, adding wind helps shore up energy supply. Unless you start to retire and dismantle your coal/gas without replacing it. Which is what we need to do to mitigate climate change.

Interesting graph of Swedish wind power to illustrate the point: http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/blog/2009/02/14/did-you-think-renewable-power-is-sustainable-think-again/

How does building wind capacity use up already installed coal and gas capacity? If I build a wind farm it has no effect on the existing amount of fossil fuel infrastructure. None of it will be used up by my turbines. The same amount of capacity will still be there. What will happen is that the coal and gas capacity will be used less when the wind blows because I don’t have to pay fuel costs and they do. If the existing capacity was sufficient to meet peak demand it will continue to be sufficient. If it wasn’t sufficient to meet peak demand then my wind farm won’t make it sufficent, because sometimes the wind doesn’t blow. But it won’t make things more dangerous. It will make things slightly less dangerous, because although heat waves are usually periods when there is little wind, their may be enough wind for my turbines to generate electricity.

Absolutely spot on. So wind needs other backup. But it can’t be coal, oil or natural gas — all big GHG producers. We can’t afford to be burning ANY of these, and a renewable energy supply that depends on them is a failure. So what else? You say biomass and hydro — perhaps, depending on where it is sourced and the local circumstances. Another option might be gas turbines with the syngas derived from plasma burners. Biomass is only ‘carbon negative’ if we capture and sequester the combustion emissions. But my point above is that to put an accurate cost on the wind power, you need to include the price of the wind turbines AND the backup (infrastructure + fuel).

Building wind which uses up already installed coal and gas capacity is very dangerous, as it leaves us more exposed to blackouts in high demand periods (e.g. heatwaves), if the wind isn’t blowing at that time.

Fuel is not 7% of the cost of nuclear LWR, and it would be < 1% of the cost of an IFR (the only fuel cost is the pyroprocessing). But as Tom and I have said ad infinitum, you could overbuild your nuclear power IF you were an all electric society (because of the need for boron reprocessing and other uses, like desal). Or you use nuclear as your baseload if you wish and keep hydro, biomass, wind, solar etc. for your high load and peaking power, and syngas for your spinning reserve.

As for wind using nuclear as back up, that wouldn’t be very practical. If wind power capacity was built to compete with existing nuclear power it would be a wasted effort from an environmental point of view as they are both low emission sources of energy. It also wouldn’t be profitable. Because fuel is only about 7% the cost of nuclear power the wind capacity would have to bid a very low price for its electricity before it became economically worthwhile for the nuclear plant to reduce output. Interestingly, France plans to build 25 gigawatts of wind capacity by 2020, but I think this will be largely backed up by Swiss hydropower.

“Spinning reserve is not peaking power. How can you possibly decide that nuclear is the answer if you make a fundamental mistake like this and not realise it?”

Because it was a typo — I had meant “except for all that spinning reserve AND peaking power gas”. Spinning reserve is part of the operating reserve that is ready to be called on ‘at will’ when there are spikes in demand or drops in supply (e.g. wind stops here and there). Hayden talks about it in depth in The Solar Fraud, as you’ll see when you read it. Monbiot also has a good discussion on Britain’s spinning and peaking reserve in Heat.

“How can you possibly decide that nuclear is the answer if you make a fundamental mistake like this and not realise it?

Excuse me, but what a stupendously ridiculous non-sequitur [even if it was true]. Really, if that is the best argument you can mount against nuclear power or my views on it, then, well…

The LFTR is a Gen IV molten salt fast spectrum reactor that breeds fissile U-233 from fertile Th-232. It can also burn transuranics. The SFR (part of an IFR, though a LFTR could also be part of an IFR) is a Gen IV liquid-metal-cooled fast reactor that breeds fissile Pu-239 from fertile U-238. It can also burn transuranics. Both are heavily proliferation resistant. I don’t see how you can be “quite happy” to support the LFTR and not the SFR. They are both superb prospects, but the SFR is further along the RD&D pathway and this is why it is being advocated as the first one to move on.

There is virtually no peer-reviewed literature on the scale-up potential of renewables. IPCC AR4 WGIII review could cite nothing. There is Jacobson’s recent piece, but it hardly gets to the nuts and bolts of the problem. Trainer has written a peer-reviewed book, published by academic publisher Springer, that backs up ‘my opinion’. Pielke, Wigley & Green published another in Nature last year. But it’s currently a tiny literature for both arguments.

There are 2 ways this happens, the first is the sudden exposure of methane rich water to air at the intake to the turbine (like opening a soft drink bottle) and this may be a solvable problem. The second is from the ebb and flow of dam margins and rotting vegetation … much tougher so deal with.

I am getting there. The copy of Prescription for the Planet is on order and I have requested a copy of the Solar Fraud from my local library. It is not because I have not bothered as you a bit unfairly say. I am also halfway through the Trainer critique – I realised that the link I sent you was not a critique of the original paper.

“I see quite clearly that the ‘renewables will do it all’ (except for all that spinning reserve of peaking power gas) mantra is delusional. Yet we must have a carbon-free source of energy that can sustain a modern society. Only nuclear power can deliver that.”

But this is only your opinion. I think that you have not got a real handle on how electricity is distributed. Your statement here in your response “except for all that spinning reserve of peaking power gas” indicates a lack of understanding. Spinning reserve is not peaking power. How can you possibly decide that nuclear is the answer if you make a fundamental mistake like this and not realise it?

I guess I am being a bit harsh as well however nuclear has had the same dishonest bull&^*! being touted that it is clean and cheap when it is neither. I am not anti-nuclear completely. As I have said I would be quite happy for countries with low renewable potential to use the LFTR (http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/) as it is completely proliferation proof and eats nuclear waste. However there is nothing in the peer reviewed literature that backs up your opinion that renewables cannot contribute a major fraction of the world’s energy supply. In fact the main part or consensus of the literature says that it can.

“You and others might choose to leave my blog on the basis that this is clearly a fundamental and irrevocable philosophical divide.”

Sorry you do not get rid of me that easily. I totally agree with you on the magnitude of climate change and the problems that we face however I can agree to disagree on the solution and still be a responsible member of this community. I would only leave if this blog descended into the insults, and dishonest crap that Morohasy has on her blog.